Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday November 19, 2013 @11:28AM
from the novelty-draws-detractors dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "A small handful of Tesla electric cars have caught fire, driving down the company's stock price, and finally prompting CEO Elon Musk to tackle the issue in a new blog posting. 'Since the Model S went into production last year, there have been more than a quarter million gasoline car fires in the United States alone, resulting in over 400 deaths and approximately 1,200 serious injuries (extrapolating 2012 NFPA data),' he wrote in that posting. 'However, the three Model S fires, which only occurred after very high-speed collisions and caused no serious injuries or deaths, received more national headlines than all 250,000+ gasoline fires combined.' Responsible journalism on the matter, he added, has been 'drowned out' by 'an onslaught of popular and financial media seeking to make a sensation out of something that a simple Google search would reveal to be false.' According to his own figures, Tesla suffers an average of one fire per 6,333 cars, versus a rate of one fire per 1,350 gasoline-powered cars. Every Tesla vehicle includes internal walls between the battery modules, in addition to a firewall between the battery pack and the passenger compartment — enough shielding, in the event of a fire, to prevent pens and papers in the glove compartment from combusting. 'Despite multiple high-speed accidents, there have been no deaths or serious injuries in a Model S of any kind ever,' Musk continued. 'Of course, at some point, the law of large numbers dictates that this, too, will change, but the record is long enough already for us to be extremely proud of this achievement.' Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds. In theory, that could reduce the chances of impact damage to the underbody, should the vehicle roll over an object — and that, in turn, could lower the chances of fire."

More than enough of those cars just...catch fire. Leaking gas lines, oil/fluid leaks dripping on to cataclysmic converters... no collisions involved.Far in the Tesla's favor are monitoring systems that tell the driver something serious is amiss, and where/what, rather than just relying on smells, cabin filled with smoke, flames coming out from under the hood...or the check engine light.New cars, with their fine multi-function LCD panels, should all be able to list out engine codes w/o dealer intervention or other hardware, even while running. But only Tesla does...

To be fair, those were Fiskers which had acquired a reputation for catching fire if you look ta them wrong.

And no matter what they claim - it was a short in the 12 volt system that caused the fire. Something every car has, even the Tesla (it's used to run all the traditional 12V accessories in a car - ventilation, windows, lights, etc).

I have no special love for Tesla or Musk but I think I have to agree with him there. Looking at the facts, these fires are not a very big deal, especially given the age of the (mainstream) electric car market. Sure, efforts should be made to aleviate the issue but obviously, if an accident punctures a battery there's a chance of fire just as there is one if you puncture a gas tank.

It is just statistics. More Tesla cars on the roads, the higher the chance of one of them getting hit. This is just me, but I'm still pretty impressed by their crash record.

The one thing I'm really curious about is how many Priuses catch fire in wrecks. Priuses tend to be the mainstream vehicle, in terms of popularity, with an EV subsystem, so they should be the standard of how much damage causes a fire or not.

This car = far fewer fires and deaths per car, per person, per mile, per whatever.

Not to discredit you, because it doesn't, but that's also due in part to who can afford a Tesla. You don't have too many idiot 16 year olds with Teslas. You also don't see any 20 year old Teslas on the road.

...but obviously, if an accident punctures a battery there's a chance of fire just as there is one if you puncture a gas tank.

How likely is one to puncture the gas tank though, and how much risk of fire is there if the gas tank is ruptured, compared to if a battery is ruptured?

Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of electric vehicles and have mulled doing a conversion on my quarter-ton pickup, but I don't like the idea of high-centering on a foreign object causing a fire.

I agree too, but at the same time there is a very useful saying - never buy version 1.0 of anything. And that applies especially to motor vehicles regardless of their mode of propulsion. They usually suffer recalls and that's just for the critical / safety related problems that the loss adjusters say can't wait. There must be a raft of lesser but still serious issues which either cannot be fixed or only get fixed if you bring the car in for a service. Raising the suspension in vehicles sounds like a kludge

Gasolene tanks are NOT buried in the car, they're on the edge of it, defended by a thin bit of aluminium plate and plastic.

They are, however, UNDERNEATH the car, so anyone trying to reach it standing by the side of the car will reach though almost the entire depth of the car before getting to the gas tank. Indeed, that's the problem: they're on the bottom far edge of the car open to puncturing.

Just like your claim of the Tesla.

Except the Tesla has thick armour-class steel protecting it from below and internal baffles.

Curious....Here's a question I don't think we've asked yet. What percentage of car fires are intentional? I know for a fact it happens as an insurance recovery scheme, but have no clue as to how often.

While the fuel will burn the same, the amount of time and mileage before a fire occurs is important. If 90% of models are end-of-lifed and junked out before there's a statistically significant chance of fire in that model, then it's much less of a problem than if it's new cars that are catching on fire, because not only is there a probability of an older, rarer-in-service model having a fire, but there's now a problem of new models, of which there are many more in service, catching fire.

Most of the car fires that I've seen have involved carbureted vehicles, which are older, possess a greater quantity of fuel up in the engine bay (in the fuel bowls), and have moving parts that have an opportunity go gum up and stick (the floats and the needles-and-seats). While fuel pressures are low, the rubber lines, fuel pump diaphragms, and carburetor gaskets are all places that are close to significant amounts of electricity and thus are fairly likely to spark off if a leak occurs.

I don't want to comment on the abortion that is TBI, but most post-fire EFI vehicles that I've seen have had passenger compartment fires, not engine/drivetrain/fuelsystem fires. Certainly there are burned-up EFI vehicles, but again, it should not happen to new vehicles.

Yes.... but typically a Tesla has no gasoline on board. You'd think that a lack of chance of fire would be a Tesla selling point.

Accelerating a car takes energy. That energy has to be stored on board the car. Whenever you store a lot of energy in a small space, there is a risk that the energy could be released. Gasoline is not uniquely dangerous in that respect.

Doing 70 on the freeway and running over some debris is neither high speed, nor a collision.

Just because one high speed happens to be slower than another high speed doesn't mean it is not high speed. In this case, as we are talking about collisions, high speed means significantly faster than the average 35-40mph that crash tests are generally done at. 70mph, 80mph and 155mph all satisfy that definition of "significantly faster than 40mph" and therefore all can be considered high speed when discussing collisions.

What would have to happened to a gasoline powered car if a "rusty three-pronged trailer hitch that was sticking up with the ball up in the air" had punctured the gas tank? Or possibly worse, a diesel tank. Nothing like going around a bend on a motorcycle and hitting a patch of diesel to make your day interesting.

The fucking point is we're talking about a collision at speeds that usually involve totaling cars, and people are trying to act like someone ran over a pepsi bottle in the parking lot and the car bust into flames.

Every single night I see murders and stabbings on TV news, and you are citing WIKIPEDIA to "prove" otherwise? You sound like a fucking retarded gun control advocate trying to convince me to give up my primary source of personal protection.

And you've just proved you fall for the sensationalist media like Musk is talking about.

You probably didn't even look at the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page where it clearly states the numbers are pulled from FBI and BJS reports, both government sources that you can go for primary data if you think Wikipedia is fudging the numbers. You also didn't look at the graphs in the articles, nor the data sources behind the graphs, as there is a clear downward trend in most violent crimes. Wikipedia may be untrustworthy, but there are citations and those can be verified.

If the investigation is brought on by 3 fires in 5 weeks. Then this testimonial from one of the people who's Model S caught fire, represents the fact that 33% of the people who's cars caught fire do not think the fire was dangerous or a big deal and would purchase another Model S again.

"The second Model S car fire occurred outside Merida, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. In that case, the vehicle was traveling at 100 miles per hour before the accident. During Tesla's conference call on Tuesday to discuss quarterly results with analysts, CEO Elon Musk said "The car actually sheared something like 17 feet of concrete wall, then went through a concrete wall, then smashed into a tree." The passengers, who survived what could have been a fatal accident in a less safe car, were able to flee the scene."

If you can walk away from a collision that starts at 100 mph, you're both extremely lucky and the car was well-designed. Amazing.

Based on that account, the change Tesla SHOULD be making is to be MUCH firmer about the warnings in the case of battery damage. The fire was not in any way sudden - the car was bitching at the driver for *5 minutes* before he pulled over, calmly collected his belongings, and walked away...

(Although, without possibly some extra integrity checking circuitry such as a wire mesh through the battery case, it might not be easy to distinguish battery puncture from other failure modes.)

I believe they have thermal sensors in there - perhaps more than just "BATTERY HOT" could be in order - maybe some thermistors designed to register fire temperatures, and something to make the detection of such a bit more obvious. Example, in an A-10 aircraft those fire extinguisher handles [digitalcom...ulator.com] along the top light up like Christmas trees. Airliners have similar features as well [youtube.com] - why not a car?

It doesn't really matter what caused the failure; the sensors are telling the car that the temperature in the battery is rising slowly but uncontrollably, and that the driver needs to get out ASAP... the cause is not relevant to the driver at that point.

People are really bad at understanding statistics because the Mainstream Media purposely skews reporting to maintain current power structures. If the media did a halfway accurate job of reporting how well the Teslas perform compared to traditional cars, you would have a ton of lawmakers, lobbyists, power brokers, and other old-money individuals all 'making phone calls' to get those involved removed. Real journalism has died. Instead, we have 'mainstream journalism' and 'fringe journalism.' The truth is found more often in fringe journalism.

It's just like watching an NFL game on TV and trying to figure out who the announcers are rooting for.. Guess what? They're rooting for a close game and whatever team has the momentum. If Tesla gains enough 'momentum' and mainstream acceptance (industry is large enough to gain its own power brokers), you will start seeing sensational articles about how great the Tesla is.

If you get in an accident in a gas powered car the likelihood of it catching fire (and presumably doing extensive damage to the vehicle) is low. But in the Tesla the chances of your car burning up are much higher?

But that assumes the amount of damage caused by a fire is catastrophic. Now we need stats on how much damage is done by fires to know how bad catching fire really is.

Also, you need to adjust for speed of collision. Since there are a lot more gasoline powered cars on the road, chances are they are way more represented in low speed accidents, which most likely has lower chance of causing fire.

You give them too much credit. A good portion of the population _chooses_ ignorance over logical and rational conclusions. The only explanation is that when it comes to educating oneself, many people say it's "too hard" which basically equates to "I don't f#cking feel like it". (other factors, such as blind fundamentalism, is another matter)

Yes, people often choose ignorance. But most of the time, most people do so rationally. Does each of us know who won each college football game this past weekend, and which players contributed what to the results? We could... but odds are, many of us "don't feel like it," and are therefore ignorant about who's up or down in the BCS standings.

If you want to talk about the educated populace, scientists often choose to stick with what they know or believe, as documented in Thomas Kuhn's "Theory of Scientif

Musk is comparing a population of new, low milage , well maintained cars driven short distances by caring owners to the general population of cars including 10 year old 80,000 mile rustbuckets driven by teens who haven't had it serviced in years.

If you are not comparing like for like, you cannot draw any sort of reliable conclusion from your stats

If Musk wasn't so keen on trying to use intellectual dishonesty and general ignorance to his advantage, he wouldn't have said anything, since there's a very strong chance that no other single 2014 model of automobile is seeing 15% of their production line burning up once they hit the roads.

And speaking of intellectual dishonesty when complaining about other's abuse of statistics, it's best not to commit abuse on your own part.

Instead of taking his word as gospel, do your own research:...Per Wikipedia, somewhere around 18,200 Model S' have been sold since 2012; 3-4 of them have caught on fire...

So far, what you're telling me is that Musk's rate of about 1 in 6000 - about 3 fires in 18,000 cars - is accurate.

Ford sold over 250,000 Fusions in 2013 alone, and if you can find a figure for how many of those caught on fire, I'd bet dollars to pesos that the percentage will be far lower than that of the Model S.

And now you're telling me that Musk is wrong because of...your gut feeling. While I guess that's more honest than just making up an absurdly high percentage like you did in your first post, you still aren't bringing any useful information to the table.

1 in 8142 insured passenger cars, SUVS and pickups for model years 2010-12 were involved in a noncrash fire claim.

93 Fusions over MY2010 to MY2012 (800000 insured vehicles) caught fire without even being involved in a crash. Extrapolate that to ~62 Fusions for MY12 -MY13, and that's not even counting the ones involved in accidents.

This is (to me) substantially similar to those people who frequently call violent crime a "growing problem" and probably comes from the same lazy, sensationalist reporters.

That's actually a matter of reporters reusing stories and bits of stories completely unchanged from the 80's, when it was a growing problem. Thirty years of writing the same story over and over again. That's a whole different level of lazy.

I am sure Tesla will continue to find ways to improve their design in areas of safety and others, as you would expect from any newer technology. Of course, media attention forces the irony of making design changes while claiming there are no issues of concern. I feel for him, its a no win situation. He should be more up-front though, as we have already discussed at length the misuse of the statistical comparison.

Every Tesla vehicle includes internal walls between the battery modules, in addition to a firewall between the battery pack and the passenger compartment — enough shielding, in the event of a fire, to prevent pens and papers in the glove compartment from combusting

Now there's an institution that doesn't get enough scrutiny, especially the financial news channels. Bloomberg and their ilk aren't so far removed from Fox and Sky (or CNN) in terms of the actual product they deliver, which is sensationalist tripe, delivered by eye candy.

What passes for journalism today is often little more than a series "factoids" carefully chosen to fit a particular narrative - pro bono omnium hominum.

It's the modern version of blame the messenger. Chris Rock said it best when addressing how people blame the media for the "portrayal" of race and crime - "When I go to the ATM money machine at night, I am not looking over my shoulder for the media."

So you're saying there is a genuine, substantive story to report with these Tesla fires - enough to warrant all this coverage - and not some drummed-up panic designed to get eyeballs on websites? What then, in your estimation is the real issue in this particular case, if indeed the media is merely a reflection of an underlying reality?

And there you have the key difference between your view and mine: you believe that journalism should be essentially a product, largely meant for consumption by its client base, while I believe (in my quixotic frame of mind, I admit), that journalism should - in its ideal form - be a service, meant to serve the public good.

>> Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds.

This is probably all a stupid kneejerk reaction. The suspension was likely already at the ideal height as determined by a lot of windtunnel etc research. Doing this will certainly create more lift under the car and so quite a lot less efficiency all in the name of being seen to be doing something visible (but actually pointless and only negative) in response to a microscopically small chance of another similar accident.

It just occurred to me that this is a whole lot like the retarded thinking behind the creation and continued existence of the TSA.

The age of the cars matters as well, as does the relative state of maintenance.

It's a reasonable assumption/statement that all Tesla Model S cars are essentially new and likely to be in near perfect maintenance condition.

If the gasoline car fire numbers were adjusted to only include cars within the age range of Tesla Model S cars and (if possible) the number of cars still within factory warranties, I would imagine the number of gasoline car fires would be significantly lower.

The age of the cars matters as well, as does the relative state of maintenance.

It's a reasonable assumption/statement that all Tesla Model S cars are essentially new and likely to be in near perfect maintenance condition.

If the gasoline car fire numbers were adjusted to only include cars within the age range of Tesla Model S cars and (if possible) the number of cars still within factory warranties, I would imagine the number of gasoline car fires would be significantly lower.

If you're going to take that route, then you need to exclude from both lists the cars that have had fires as a result of impacts. Now you're at some number of gas cars and zero Tesla vehicles. Because once you get into an impact, the age of the car is largely irrelevant.

The cold hard fact is, though, that Musk is right -- there's vastly more energy that wants to burn in a gas tank and associated fuel lines. An accident can easily rupture them, as can age corrode through them. (Even ignoring the added corrosion of ethanol these days.)

In one case, the car provided dashboard cautions immediately after collision with road debris, then warnings, then the driver pulled over a couple of minutes later, the pack was smoking, he was able to get his belongings, etc. The interior of the car remained accessible and intact.

Meanwhile, I've witnessed, fought, and heard from friends who had car fires. It typically goes something like this: smoke from somewhere. Seconds, maybe 30 if you're lucky, there are flames. Within a minute or two the car is unsalvageable. In a crash in a gasoline car, the car can be on fire within seconds, and it can be a massive fire; rear collisions break up the fuel systems, front crashes cause both oil and gasoline to leak all over hot engine exhaust parts.

Firefighters generally don't rush to car fires because by the time they got the dispatch call, the car was already gone anyway; they're there mostly to put it out so the wrecker can collect it. Seriously, go look on youtube at car fires. Within the space of a minute or two, the car is well past the point of no return.

The hyperbolization here is amazing. Years ago Bose had a little problem with their car audio systems; the electrolytic capacitors would leak the electrolyte, which would then drip down the circuit board. In some cars, the amplifier board was positioned such that this would cause a short that would at the least cause smoking, and caused several fires.

One owner described driving down the highway, hearing the stereo crackle and drop out, looking in the back window and seeing smoke, racing over to the breakdown lane and getting out and the back shelf was already in flames; he barely had time to stop the car and escape an INTERIOR PASSENGER COMPARTMENT FIRE. In a less-than-a-year-old Audi. Reportedly Audi's regional rep inspected the burned-to-the-ground car and the customer got a replacement car.

Audi, Infiniti, Corvette, and a couple of other companies were affected; recalls were made for everyone except Audi; a bunch of Audi owners banded together when Audi refused to fix the damaged speakers, and kept selling defective units to replace failed ones. nhtsa refused to discuss with us whether they had reports of other fires or failures and refused to allow owners to speak to the person handling the investigation; Audi USA repeatedly claimed they hadn't ever heard of any malfunctions or fires, when we knew they'd paid for replacement vehicles a decade prior, and continued to claim as such even after other owners had sent in registered mail complaints and received confirmation.

Lo and behold, nhtsa finally got interested and Audi revised the amp board and did a voluntary recall. Presto, no more failures. They spent years milking owners (the amps would last a few years at most before failure.)

Then there's all the exotic cars that go up in flames; car enthusiast sites cover them routinely. Funny how Ferrari and Lambo never seems to get mentioned in the press as having a lot of car fires, huh? That's what the best money in PR gets you: shit swept under the rug fast.

The negative stories in financial press are designed to drive down the stock price. Then the buddies of the press - or the people the analysts really work for - can pick up shares on the dip. Or they can warn their buddies that a negative story is coming out and work the options angle.

Fires per car is worthwhile information, but to be honest, we really need fires per miles driven information.

That is, if the fires per tesla car is 1/6,000, with a total of 6 billion miles driven, and the fires per gas car is 1/1,300 with a total of 12 billion miles driven (because people drive gas cars much further), then tesla would still be more dangerous than a gas car.

Note, I personally believe that a Tesla car is safer and less prone to fires than a gas powered car, but the statistic we really need has not been given.

First, you need to look at the criteria you use to determine what you want to learn.

If the question is: What are the odds that a random vehicle being driven today will catch fire, broken down by Tesla vs. non-Tesla?, then Musk has given the correct figure with the data we have.

If the question is: How many miles does a vehicle have to be driven, on mean, before it catches fire, broken down by Tesla vs. non-Tesla?, then Musk hasn't given us enough information to determine. Depending on data collection, it

It's falling because the stock price got way ahead of the company's prospects, which Musk himself has previously acknowledged. The fires were only a catalyst that reminded investors of the systemic, secular, and event risk associated with any company, and in particular for a company that is valued for perfection by the markets.

Third, to reinforce how strongly we feel about the low risk of fire in our cars, we will be amending our warranty policy to cover damage due to a fire, even if due to driver error. Unless a Model S owner actively tries to destroy the car, they are covered. Our goal here is to eliminate any concern about the cost of such an event and ensure that over time the Model S has the lowest insurance cost of any car at our price point. Either our belief in the safety of our car is correct and this is a minor cost or we are wrong, in which case the right thing is for Tesla to bear the cost rather than the car buyer.

I think it is clear that the Tesla is more likely to have a fire if you hit something hard enough to puncture the vehicle's armor plating and pierce the battery pack. It's a specific mode of failure and I don't know how common of an event this will be in the long run. I also don't think it's as big of a deal as the media is making. It doesn't "explode" or unexpectedly burst into flames that engulf the passenger compartment. A cluster of events does not define a trend in my mind.

I really like the low center of gravity, the balanced fore-aft weight distribution and the ridiculous amounts of trunk space the "skateboard" design allows. It makes for a great handling car, which improves safety. It also means huge crumble zones to absorb kinetic energy in a crash, which also improves safety. To me, it's a design trade-off. The real measure of the trade off will be whether people are safer, on average, or not. So far there have been no deaths or serious injuries, but the sample size and time frame is small for that to be really meaningful. But I'm hopeful, and if I could afford one, I'd buy one.

Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds.

Now that scares me. The suspension can be updated remotely? What could possibly go wrong?
Just how good is the security on that? Who has access to the keys? Are you sure? How are the download servers secured? Is the update system protected against cut-and-paste attacks?

That kind of update could be used as an assassination weapon.

When Tesla was talking about automatic driving, I suggested that there must be a second processor, with completely different software, checking the main system for sanity (like "not approaching obstacle at high speed") and able to force a stop. The backup system should have its program in ROM, and changing that program should require breaking seals and physically plugging in a new program module.

Flight control software for airliners works like that. For the Airbus line, the backup software was written by a different team for a different kind of CPU in a different programming language, to avoid any possibility of a common mode failure.

Some of the cars have active air suspension which is able to raise and lower the car. It is controllable by the touch screen. Normally when driving at highway speeds the car will lower itself. They have disabled this and promised that in a future software update that this feature will be user configurable as to whether or not the car lowers itself.

I have received several software updates to my car and they have added some major features from those updates. They also have changed things like the last softwar